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A
RATIONAL DEFENCE
OF
THE GOSPEL.
-SERM.
XVII.
the perfect
righteousness
of
my
Saviour
that
has procured
it.
A life
of
holiness
without
defect,
and
a
most
submis-
sive
obedience to
a
painful and
shameful death, have been
the price and purchase
of
it."
3.
This
gospel
is
a
most powerful means
to
subdue
sin in
the
soul, to
mortify
corrupt nature,
to
inspire
us
with virtue, to wean our
hearts
from
vice,
sensuality,
and
trifles,
and
from
all
the
insufficient
pretences to
blessedness
that
the world can
flatter
us
with.
The
gospel
of
Christ,
both
in his
own
personal minis-
try
of
it,'
and
in the writings
of
his
apostles, sets before
us
the
most divine scheme
of
morality,
piety and virtue,
that
ever the world
knew.
The
sacred dictates of pro-
bity and goodness toward
men, as well
as
the venerable
rules
of
piety
toward God,
which
are scattered up and
down in an
imperfect and obscure
:
manner
among
the
philosophers, and
shine like
a
star
here andethere
in
the
midnight darkness
of heathenism;
these
are
all collected
and
refined in the gospel
of
Christ,
and
fill
the christian
world with a
pure
and universal light
like
the sun
un-
clouded in
a
meridian sky: We
know
our duty
infinitely
better
from
the instructions
of Christ
and
St.
Paul, than
all
the Platos, and the Plutarchs,
all
the
Zenòs
and
the
Antonines
of
Greece and
Rome, could
ever teach
us.
The
most divine rules
of
the gospel are
attended
also
with the noblest
motives
to love
virtue,
and
to
hate all
vice
;
for
never
was
the
evil
of
sin so
displayed to
the
eyes
and
senses
of
men, as by
the
cross
and
gospel
of
our
Lord Jesus
Christ::
Never
did
sin
appear
so
hateful,
so
abominable,
so
justly
the object
of
divine
and
human
hatred,
as
when
it appeared
pressing the soul
of
the
holy
One
of
God
into
agonies
and sharp
anguish. A
believer,
who has seen
the
evil
of
sin as
revealed
in
this gospel,
will
hate
it,
and
will
be led
powerfully to
a
conquest
over
it.
Besides,
the
terrors of
hell
are revealed
to
us
among
the doctrines
of
christianity,
as the
just
punishment
of
sin;
and
that
in such
a manner
as
no
other
religion pre-
tends
to
:
For,
as the
doors
of
heaven are opened
by
our
lord
Jesus
Christ, both
by his
ministry on earth, and
by
his
ascent into
heaven, and
by
the
farther
discoveries
which
his
apostles have made
of
the
future
unseen happy
world,
so
the
doors
of
hell
are opened
too.
Our
Lord